The KGB questioned them about excursions to the Ural Mountains and Siberia. Why had they associated with Lithuanian exiles during the excursions? Why had former prison camps been visited? The interrogators charged them with trying to establish ties with nationalist elements among the Armenians, Georgians, and other nationalities during excursions to the Caucasus Mountains.

Those being interrogated were reproached because during excursions to the Sambija region of East Prussia they had taken an interest in and called attention to the destruction of cultural monuments from the past and had burned candles on fortress mounds.

The secret police showed an interest in the Folk Song Club at the Trade-Union Hall; in Romuva, the Vilnius State University students' club which had been disbanded two years ago; in summer expeditions; in the Rasa Festival at Kernave; in the archeological expedition to the Sventoji River.

The persons being interrogated were rebuked for taking an interest in the past and in idealizing it, for by such means nationalist sentiments are disseminated. "Why are only Lithuanian songs being sung? Why are songs of freedom fighters sung? Why is information being collected about the struggle that had been waged by the freedom fighters? Why are nationalist sentiments being propagated at meetings with Latvians? Why is there cameraderie with Byelorussian Lithuanians? Why are books taken to them, newspaper subscriptions presented to them? Why are their children urged to attend Lithuanian schools in Lithuania?"

The secret police wanted to know by what means large numbers of youths are attracted to programs presented by ethnographers.

R. Matulis was ordered to sign a statement that he would not organize or participate in any gatherings if they did not conform to the policies of official agencies.

VILNIUS
Toward the end of March, 1973, the LSSR Landmark Preservation and Ethnography Society held in Vilnius its fourth convention, which summarized the etnographers' activities. V. Uogintas, chairman of the society's council, stated that "at every step of his work each ethnographer must follow Marxist-Leninist methodology and its class criteria," that "it is essential to struggle against any encountered tendencies of idealizing the past" and against "demonstrations of nationalism." Particular attention should be devoted to the preservation, care, and popularization of monuments honoring labor, the revolutionary and partisan movements, and the battles fought by the Soviet Army.

"By gathering ethnographic data that is not all-inclusive but only that which savors of the past, we turn away willy-nilly from the most pressing problems of life... The ethnographers' immediate task is to record everything that concerns today's worker and what the Soviet government has granted him," spoke J. Jarmalavičius, the chairman of the society's Vilnius city chapter.

[Miss] L. Diržinskaitė, vice-chairman of the LSSR Council of Ministers, requested that our ethnographers collect data on the participants of the revolutionary movement and that they concern themselves with the nurturing of man in a Communist society (Tiesa [Truth], March 27, 1973).